


Documentation

by alunsina



Category: Girl's Day (Band), K-pop, VIXX
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-05 11:35:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5373851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alunsina/pseuds/alunsina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ahyoung asks when and how they met. Things snowball from there. N/Sojin in snapshots. Non-idol AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Documentation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [affxed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/affxed/gifts).



> To my recipient: This isn't exactly what you asked for in the prompts but I hope you'll still like it! Happy Holidays!
> 
> My deep thanks to J for the beta of the initial draft (any subsequent wrongness is mine and mine alone).

1.

Ahyoung asks a simple enough question that should probably have simple, normal, neatly-tied-with-a-bow answers. The kind that, Sojin believes, Hakyeon would no doubt have in spades. Except Minah has been steadily pouring him soju shots in the past hour in an effort to test his alcohol tolerance or to get him to spill whatever horrible secrets Sojin has been hiding from her co-workers. And Hyeri, the office’s maknae, is lying in wait like a vulture eager for some meaty gossip.

Hakyeon has zero alcohol tolerance to speak of. He puts down the now-empty shot glass and mulls over it. There’s a splotch of red staining his cheeks, his neck, the tips of his ears. When he opens his mouth and begins with, “I’ve always thought she’s the most beautiful. She’s my first love, you know?” and stumbles somewhere at, “I met her during a very dark period in my life and she helped me out a lot,” Sojin curls her fingers underneath the table and despairs. She can already see this heading the way of disaster.

“How can algebra be a dark period in your life?” she asks, taking the shot glass and soju bottle out of his reach. She glares at Minah for good measure. But Minah barely lifts her head from grilling the meat, and when she does, she just looks at her with droopy eyes of affected innocence, as if to say, unnie, you said make your boyfriend feel welcome, no really, we are welcoming him the way we know how.

Hakyeon pouts at the spot on the table where his shot glass had been. “Sojin made me do math problem sets every afternoon during middle school. Very, very dark times.” Also, very, very drunk, Sojin decides right there and then. Hakyeon’s very, very drunk indeed.

“It’s so cute and romantic that you knew right away that unnie’s The One. Ahh, I’m so envious,” Ahyoung says, going glassy-eyed and Sojin’s sure she’s imagining her own fairytale version of it. “I wish I had a childhood sweetheart too.”

“No, you’ve got it all wrong. We weren’t childhood sweethearts that would’ve been—“ inappropriate, Sojin doesn’t say. “He was just this kid that followed me around,” Sojin finishes, feeling lame, looking at these three girls and being unable to explain.

“A kid with good taste,” Hakyeon nods. She would kick him but he’ll just make a noise and pout in her direction for the entire evening.

Then Hyeri grins at them both. All white teeth. Sojin regrets ever coming out here and knowing every one of these people because Hyeri, practically still doing her internship, leans in closer and asks out loud, “Oppa, tell us, when did you drop formalities with unnie?” She stresses _formalities_ like she means something else. And horror of horrors, Hakyeon opens his mouth again, not a slightest bit of hesitation or embarrassment. Sojin reaches over and claps her hand over his mouth.

“We’re going home. Honestly, I can’t trust any of you,” Sojin says to the girls. They don’t even have the decency not to laugh.

Contrary to whatever romanticized version of history Hakyeon keeps on endorsing: “Math wasn’t the first time we met. It was sometime earlier. Primary school? I remember auntie bringing you to our house,” she says. They opted to walk the rest of the way home, Sojin reasoning that they needed to sober up a bit, and offering her shoulder for support. Hakyeon is putting up a valiant effort not to put his entire weight on her, though gravity clearly has its own ideas and he lists a little onto Sojin’s shoulder. The night is cold and their coats seem inadequate to the nippy breeze. Sojin clutches Hakyeon’s warm side.

“But math was more memorable, don’t you think so?” Hakyeon says. He turns to her and Sojin tilts her head back to look at him. “You have something on your face.”

He brushes his thumb over her chin, then he leans in and kisses her, a quick but steady press of lips. Pulls back. The world realigns itself and the cold wind hits Sojin’s too-hot cheeks.

“Thought I saw something. My bad,” he says, straight-faced and unrepentant.

“I think you’re still drunk.” Sojin pulls up her scarf to cover her breathlessness. She wonders when she’d started to feel every gesture, every small thing as a running current from the top of her head to the tips of her toes.  

 Hakyeon rocks back on his heels, smiling, and resumes walking. “Hyeri didn’t really mean formalities, did she?”

“Please forget I ever introduced them as friends.”

 

2.

The first time they actually meet it’s in school. Sojin’s nine and Hakyeon’s five and Hakyeon doesn’t make the greatest of first impressions. He wanders into Sojin’s classroom floor aiming for the toilets and ends up at the Lost and Found corner instead, taking the signage literally. Sojin would’ve ignored him if not for the pitiful way he crouched on the floor, if her mom hadn’t been pregnant at that time and told Sojin she’s going to be a big sister thing soon, if she hadn’t seen the big fat drops of tears rolling down Hakyeon’s distressed face.

Not the type to waste words she says, “What grade are you in? Who’s your teacher?” When Hakyeon doesn’t answer and keeps crying his silent tears, Sojin approaches him and holds out her hand.

“It’ll be alright. Noona will help you.”

Hakyeon wipes his face clean with the sleeves of his uniform and looks up. He takes her hand. He gets up on his feet and follows her.

 

3.

“Do you have them, Sojin noona?” Hakyeonie repeats like he’s spitting out gum on the sidewalk, like Sojin hadn’t heard him the first time around. Sojin raises her head from Hakyeonie’s worksheet. The day is too humid and too warm to do this in the Cha’s living room floor with the air-conditioning going a bit wonky and waiting for repairs. But there’s no space big enough for the quiet explosion of textbooks, Hakyeon’s worksheets, and Hakyeon’s strong opinions against quadratic equations. Or about high school friendships.

“I have friends. Girl friends. Guy friends.” Hakyeon seems unsatisfied with her answer, peering from under his bangs, chin resting on the backs of his hands.

“I meant boyfriends.”

“Oh.” So maybe Sojin hadn’t heard him correctly then. She busies herself with checking the rest of Hakyeon’s answers. She hasn’t had them. Yet. There is that handsome team captain of their school’s soccer team that she started chatting with. But Sojin guesses she’ll be busy studying for CSAT to actually go through with it, much too busy when she’s aiming to get into a good engineering program in a top university.

Hakyeon splays on the living room floor when Sojin doesn’t give him an answer. “High school must be so much fun. Noona doesn’t come here to play anymore unless it’s to torture me with math.”

Sojin laughs and tells him off from being too dramatic. “Yah, are you jealous that I’m spending more time in school? Don’t worry, you’ll have your own exciting high school life, too.” She ruffles his hair, which Hakyeon avoids by rolling far away from her reach. He gets like this sometimes. Lonely? Morose? A given state of morose at least for a middle schooler. The last Sojin heard of it he’s well-liked in school and popular too. “But he thinks too much sometimes,” his mother said to her one afternoon as she was leaving, “Can you talk to him? He listens to you. Maybe he’s too embarrassed to bring it up with any of us.”

“Is this about a girl? Do you like someone?” Hakyeon’s head snaps up so fast Sojin worries he might have broken his neck.

“No,” he says in a high voice and collapses back into a tense heap. A yes, then.

“That’s so cute. Is she pretty? Come on, tell noona everything! I can give you great advice!”

He rolls over and buries his head into his arms. “This is not cute. I’m in terrible pain. I’m going to die here on this floor alone and unloved.” She gets up, tries to pull him to his feet, but ends up half-dragging him across the floor.

“Hakyeon-ah, this is not the way to live your life. Don’t give up. Get up on your two feet and fight!”

He gives her a look of incredible sadness. “But what if she never likes me back?” Sojin stops. Thinks about it.

“Then we’ll go get some ice cream, my treat. My heartbroken friends swear by it.” This time Hakyeon glares at her with all the brittle intensity he can muster at his age.

“Are you a child, noona? This isn’t something that can be easily cured by ice cream.” Sojin karate chops his neck for his insolence and gives him the next problem set to distract him. 

 

4.

This thing with Hakyeon:

He fetches her in the office and takes her home. There are occasional dinners. Movie dates outside and in her small apartment. He sends her selcas and messages during days they can’t meet, when Hakyeon is stuck in the dance studio or when Sojin is too busy to look up from designing yet another car exhaust bracket.

And there are times when Sojin herself has to come running to the dance studio straight from work, arms laden with food. Hakyeon’s dongsaengs would shoot her relieved glances as they open the studio doors and say, “Thank you for coming. Hyung’s starting to become unbearable.” They would point her to Hakyeon slumped on the practice room floor, sweaty and utterly exhausted, whining about how the dongsaengs went out for gopchang again without him.

“You don’t even eat gopchang,” she’d say, crouching next to him and handing him the box of chicken. A stunned look, like he doesn’t quite expect her to be here, and what? What is she supposed to do?

“I wasn’t complaining about not eating gopchang. But hello. I love you.” Hakyeon would regain his composure then, sit up straight like he isn’t tired at all, and reach out to cup her face. One of the younger ones, Hongbin, would groan, _this was a mistake_. Sojin would agree.

It’s not that Sojin doesn’t like it, is embarrassed by it, or otherwise thinks Hakyeon’s embarrassing. Well, not most of the time.

“It’s nice that he likes you a lot,” Ahyoung gives her two cents during lunch break. She looks at Sojin picking at her food. “Are you going to eat that, unnie?”

Sojin dumps half her pasta on Ahyoung’s plate. “Don’t you think it’s a bit excessive? It’s fine, right?”

“It’s like asking me if being in love is okay.” Ahyoung laughs, pasta still inside her mouth, and Sojin reminds her to chew properly. “Just enjoy it. At least until he goes to serve in the army.”

 

5.

Over breakfast Sojin’s mother says, “It’s a good thing he got into the same university,” which has suddenly taken to mean that Sojin would be spending her week playing campus tour guide and babysitter. Not that Hakyeonie particularly needs looking after.

“But you know how he is,” her mother continues, unable to keep out the amusement from her voice. “The way his mother talked about him I’d expect he would be looking lost and trailing after you again like old times.”

They haven’t seen each other for years. But Cha Hakyeon is Cha Hakyeon and when they meet up outside her house on the first day of the semester she recognizes the all black ensemble (black t-shirt tucked into his slim-fit black pants, black sneakers), the posture, the scrunch of his forehead that he gets whenever he’s puzzled over a word problem. He’s rearranging his fringe using his phone screen as a mirror.

“You’ve grown taller,” Sojin says instead of a proper greeting, because he is very, very annoyingly tall. Hakyeon puts away his phone, and god, he has to look down at her now. What is he eating these days?

Hakyeon takes a moment just looking at her, then opens his mouth. “It’s been a long time, Sojin noona,” he says. “I sure hope so. Makes me more handsome, right?” He’s grinning and the weird atmosphere dissipates.

“I’m sure you’ll be very popular with all the girls in uni,” Sojin nods, playing along.

On the station platform while waiting for the next train to arrive, Sojin takes out a hair tie and tries fixing her ponytail. When she brushes a few stray hair strands away from her face, Hakyeon glances sideways at her, stares for an inordinate length of time at, what Sojin considers to be, the very unremarkable shape of her left ear. 

 

6.

This is what Sojin doesn’t say to Ahyoung: it feels like there’s a ticking clock in the back of her head, because surely there’s an end date to all of this, and some parts in the system will get run down and rust over time.

“Or spontaneously burst into flames. A car wreck,” she says out loud at the particularly messy schematics of an engine spread out on top of her desk. She’s been staring down at it for the past four hours and things stopped making sense since this morning.

“Have you been drinking again before coming to work, unnie?” Hyeri calls out from the copy machine.

“Sssh, stop with the jokes. I think she hasn’t been getting much sleep,” Minah whispers from behind her computer monitor.

 

7.

All parts of the system come together on what passes for a normal hot Saturday afternoon. Sojin wears jeans gone soft and faded, t-shirt, flip flops. Puts on a wide-brimmed hat to keep the sun out of her face. It’s another one of their countless excursions to educate Hakyeon on the ins and outs of the campus and the city. Even if he’s halfway into his freshman year already. Even if Sojin has pending projects to complete. Hakyeon hasn’t changed much in his sense of direction (which is nonexistent) and her graduation feels like a faraway dream at this point.

“Date?” her younger brother mouths at her and she calls back, “No! A tour!” before slipping out of their front door.

When she meets up with Hakyeon at a corner coffee shop near campus, he presses an iced latte in her hands, and refuses any sort of payment. Hakyeon is all buttoned up in an immaculate white shirt with the sleeves neatly rolled up to his elbows, wearing nice black pants that fit well, good shoes. His hair is all styled. If he were smaller like before, Sojin would’ve definitely messed it up just for making her feel under-dressed in her afternoon off. But it takes more effort to reach up than to stay on ground level and grumble.

“Did you go to a shop?” She motions at his hair, at his face, and wow, the facial calisthenics in that one question. “You should’ve told me you’re meeting someone after, we could’ve rescheduled. I was just going to show you that weird sculpture and the libraries--”

“It’s fine,” Hakyeon says, directing the words to her forehead. Sojin scrubs at it with the heel of her hand. Maybe she missed a grease stain from working at one of her projects this morning. “Your forehead’s fine. It’s pretty, noona.” Hakyeon reaches out to stop her. His palms are clammy around her wrist.

Sojin crosses her arms. “Tell me what’s wrong. I’m not going to take you to see that phallic sculpture over at architecture if you’re just standing there with that sour face.” 

Hakyeon squares his shoulders. Takes a deep breath. “I want to take you out on a date.”

“This is some kind of a date. Come on, something must be bothering you. If it’s about expenses, I’ll take care of it. Or are you nervous about the one you’re meeting later?”

Hakyeon chuckles. It sounds hollow. “I was nervous about meeting you.”

“Okay.” Something doesn’t add up. Hakyeon must’ve seen it reflected on her face, the incomprehensibility of it all, that he forges on.

“I want to take you on a proper date. The two of us. Not as noona-dongsaeng. Not as friends.” He’s picking at the cuticle of his thumb, which must be painful, but he doesn’t take his eyes off hers. “I’ve liked noona for a very long time—“

How long is a very long time between the two of them? A month? Since this semester started? A year? Two years? Her mind buzzes. She blames it on the coffee that Hakyeon gave her.

“--sorry if I’m overstepping. But you said once that I shouldn’t give up and I wanted to,” Hakyeon falters then, whatever bravado he’d been banking on failing him. “I’d understand if you want to leave now,” he finishes, sounding miserable.

“You want to date me?” Sojin repeats.

Hakyeon nods. And it’s that dogged facial expression rather than the words that does it for Sojin, that she gets what Hakyeon’s trying to say. He likes her. Cha Hakyeon wants to date her.

“I think I forgot to pee,” she blurts out and walks back fast towards the coffee shop. When she notices that Hakyeon isn’t following right at her heels, she drags him by his wrists (the circumference of it is bigger than she remembered), and tells him to stay put on a seat under the awning.

“To keep you away from the sun. Guard my drink while I sort things out.” She leaves her almost-finished latte with him and runs straight into the restroom.

She splashes cold water on her face no less than five times.

“It’ll be like going out with your little brother. He’s still a kid,” she says to herself, looking at it at all angles, seeing things that she didn’t pay attention before. The way Hakyeon would wait up until her last lecture and walk her home. Hakyeon’s classmates in dance knowing her name and her major, greeting her properly while they tease Hakyeon nonstop. Taekwoon, Hakyeon’s roommate, warning her that Hakyeon can be very clingy but he’s a good person, and just wants the person he likes to be happy.

It isn’t like this came to her as a total surprise. Well. Okay, it did surprise her if her behavior is any indication. But she thinks she’s been low-key aware of Hakyeon’s crush. She just refused to see it. Because no matter how she runs all the variables and the scenarios in her head, there’s no way it would work, no way. It’ll be a car wreck. There’s only one answer.

“Hakyeon will get over it. He must get over it,” she tells her reflection, wiping her face dry. “There are a lot of other girls and Hakyeon’s good looking.” She comes up with a plan. Make a clean cut of it. One thing worse than not returning someone’s sincere feelings for you is stringing them along indefinitely.

Sojin comes out of the restroom. She sees Hakyeon through the glass windows, shoulders slumped, staring into the street. _What if she never likes me back?_ she hears in her head, in Hakyeon’s current voice. He’ll forget her and then maybe in the future they could be friends again. Her chest aches. She’ll lose him too.

“Hakyeonie,” she starts when she settles down across from him. He smiles back at her though it feels unnatural, more practiced.

“I knew it was a long shot,” he says, staring down at the table. “I’ve always thought noona’s the prettiest, smartest, most supportive person I’ve met. And of course I’m not the only one who can see that, no matter how badly I wished the opposite.” He taps a slow beat with his nails on the wooden table, like a metronome, like he’s doling out his words in measure.

Hakyeon looks at her and Sojin clamps down on the urge to reach out and still his hand. “I hope you won’t think too badly of me after this? It’s weird. It feels like for the past months I’ve been running trying to keep up with you. But now there’s this wall-“  

“Let’s try it,” Sojin says.

“Eh?” Hakyeon does that head-snapping-up thing again and Sojin wonders not for the first time what material his neck is secretly made out of. An alloy maybe for flexibility and tensile strength? Those are safer things to think about than wondering what the hell she’s doing here.

“Let’s try it. Just this once. This is a date.” If she attempts longer sentences her other brain functions might ring the alarms and throttle her voicebox or something. But the ache is easing out of her chest, melting if you will, at the dumbfounded expression on Hakyeon’s face. One date. Maybe the novelty for Hakyeon would wear off once he realizes how she bad she is at this.      

“Ok, a date.” Hakyeon breathes deep, exhales. There’s a disbelieving grin spreading on his face. “We are on a date.”

 

 

“How did today go?” her brother greets her once she gets home, Sojin slamming her way past the gates and into their house, footsteps heavy and loud. “Noona?”

“It was great!” Sojin pushes into her room and comes clanging back out with her toolbox and her laptop and her project notes. “I want to hit something. Do we have an extra hammer?”

“Why are you yelling? Are you angry? Did Hakyeon hyung do something wrong?”

Sojin pauses and looks over at her brother. “That’s the thing. He did everything wrong. We got lost trying to find this Italian place and we ended up sitting on the sidewalk eating meat buns and ramyeon from the convenience store and it’s great.” Sojin breathes. “Where’s that hammer?”

 

8.

The expected car wreck doesn’t come when Hakyeon goes to tell her he has enlisted for military service. Not even on the night before he’s due to report to his assigned camp for basic training:

“Please don’t exchange me for a younger model,” Hakyeon whispers in her hair while they settle on her couch, some Pixar movie playing and going unwatched on the TV. Sojin pinches him in revenge, and when he parts his mouth in an exclamation of pain, she scoots up and pulls him closer. She kisses him, no finesse, a little desperate. Hakyeon obliges and doesn’t make a comment on it.

When the car wreck does happen, it is six months into Hakyeon’s military service, and she receives a personal phone call in the office from Hakyeon himself. She missed the sound of his voice. She wishes she could cut her phone line with the pair of ordinary scissors from her desk and pretend the call never happened.

“Sojin unnie, are you okay?” Ahyoung looks over to her area, Sojin putting the phone back on it's cradle, sitting down. One thing at a time. Sojin nods her head. It is after all a long time coming. Ahyoung approaches her desk and the worried look hasn't wavered once from her face. Sojin does not cry.  

 

9.

Hakyeon finds her sitting by herself on a swing set in an empty playground, which is like a fucking Christmas miracle. She’d be embarrassed if not for how Hakyeon hasn’t changed out of his dirty army uniform, still looking freshly tired and scruffy as hell in his large oversized coat.

“Hi. I missed you a lot. Please don’t run away from me or you could sprain your ankles,” Hakyeon says glancing down at her tall heels. Sojin doesn’t even try. The last time she did that stunt, trying to go between her job and catching up with Hakyeon’s performances in uni, she broke her ankle and had to endure Hakyeon carrying her bridal-style across the soccer field because it was the shortest route to get to the school clinic.

“Was it mom? My brother?” Hakyeon wouldn’t be able to find his way out of a sack without help.

“Actually it was Hyeri who told me where you are. She drew me a map, installed an app on my phone telling me where to go.” He waves the phone at her. “Of course Ahyoung threatened to tear my balls off first. I didn’t think she’d be the violent one.”

“She was the one who had to deal with me most of the time,” Sojin says and that seems to have wiped whatever dimly-lit expression is on Hakyeon’s face.

“Can I sit down?” He gestures at the swing right next to her. Sojin shakes her head and he settles on the empty seesaw instead.

“I’m sorry about that phone call a month ago.”

The ticking clock running in her mind came to a stop when Hakyeon called her, barely six months into his military service, and with only having exchanged a handful of messages with her. He was tired and exhausted. He missed her terribly. He loved her. He didn’t want to make her suffer and make her wait for him the entire time.

“I feel like I’m holding you back. I've always made you wait--waiting for me to graduate, for me to get work, and now-” There was a break in Hakyeon’s voice then, but Sojin had no sympathy because there’s an unpleasant burn behind her sternum. Here, at last, is the end date. But it didn't feel like relief.

“I wanted you to be happy and move on with your life,” Hakyeon offers now to break the silence. “That was what I was thinking.”

Sojin nods. “Never mind if you hurt yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Never mind if you hurt me?”

Hakyeon stays quiet.

“I think this is partly my fault,” Sojin admits. “I’ve realized this. Sitting here in the swing and being forced to think in this cold weather.”

Hakyeon doesn’t make a move but he casts a concerned look in her direction. “Are you sick? You do look a little pale. Maybe we should get out of here.”

“You wanted me to move on with life. Be happy. That’s not-” Sojin forges on, looking straight back at him, ignoring the cold, her freezing fingers. How brave was Hakyeon those many years ago? To lay his heart out in all the uncertainty? “I only wanted you.”

There. She’d never been upfront with her feelings. Now it’s done she feels quite empty. Floaty even. Hakyeon catches her before she slides down to the ground.

“Okay, I was cold,” she mumbles in the warmth of Hakyeon’s neck. “You need to shave.”

“I will put that in my schedule for the next three days. Which is how long my leave should be.” He bundles her up in his car, piles on his own oversized coat on top of her, gives her a quick kiss.

“Thank you,” Hakyeon says.

“I love you,” Sojin says, trying it out, and Hakyeon beams back at her, and she wants to hide under his coat and never come out.

When Hakyeon has settled himself in the driver’s seat, Sojin peeks out of the coat.

“I take it you don’t want me to _move on with life_ without you now? Or else you have to address me properly again,” she says. The car is rumbling beneath them, the reassuring sound of Hakyeon’s engines (thanks to Sojin’s occasional tinkering, it still sounds like a dream) but they’re not moving at all, and Sojin looks at Hakyeon’s stationary boot hovering over the gas.

Hakyeon coughs. “I actually don’t remember when I stopped calling you noona.”

Sojin sits up. “You had everything marked down. Everything had an anniversary including the time we first had bubble tea together. And you forgot when you dropped noona?”

When Hakyeon changes gear without giving an answer, Sojin flops back on her seat. “Forget having sleepovers in my apartment then until you figure it out.”

“I’m only here for three days. I wanted to watch movies together in your apartment,” Hakyeon whines, then chances a glance at her. “Even the sexy sleepovers?”

“Especially the sexy ones. Please concentrate on driving, Hakyeon-ssi,” Sojin says with a straight face but breaks into laughter at Hakyeon’s pout. 

 

The End


End file.
